I played the new update, since I have a rather full week next week, otherwise I would have waited for the public release.
Absolutely great update, it simply is a must play game!
As I and many others wrote before, the artwork is just super, getting out everything HS/AiS is capable of. You see what is possible with Studio Neo, if you know what you do. And Gil obviously knows it! Top work!
And the writing is top notch as well, even I as a non-native English speaker can see that. Very good characters with variations and some surprises, as I mentioned before. Following different paths really feels different and there are hints to some events built in.
Quite a number of shout-outs in the game too. In the current update, Rosalind, Veronika and Hana are in the focus. The formers, while not in my sights, definitely grow on you, if you choose "right" in their arcs.
Hana (If you chose her path) is simply great! Some of her arc
was in discussion by several users here, like e.g.
sunaboz and little old me, so this is not such a big surprise for us, but it might be for those who were not on the Hana path.
Mina is not much in this update, for known reasons, but her last two sentences are a fraking great cliffhanger! Arrggghh, now waiting for the next update (and replaying other paths)!
I think I found a wrting error. When the MC looks at the sleeping Hana directly in the new update, she wakes and says"What are looking at?Are you watching me sleep, weirdo?" If I didn´t run into some slang use, I as a non-native speaker do not know about, there is a "you" missing for "What are you looking at".